Hi guys, I was wondering what the future of Spine and Joint replacement will be in say... 15 years. The baby boomers will be close to gone, and then what will happen to orthos? No arthritis in spine (Spondylosis/Spinal Osteoarthritis), need for joint replacement etc. What will happen to then new surgeons in this field? will it be a dying field like cardiovascular, or will neurosurgery be the new "thing". Any input would be great! Thanks
Future of ortho. Esp Spine/ Joint
- Thread starter Maybach
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Last time I checked Baby boomers were born between 1945-1964. That means the oldest baby boomers are only 61, not even old enough to collect social security. Seriously, life expectancy is pretty dam high now, and it creeps higher every year. In 15 years baby boomers will not be close to gone. In fact, baby boomers will not be close to gone until around 2035-2040!
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Last *I* checked, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, kyphosis--all degenerative diseases.
Besides, there will always be people who fall out of deer stands and need their spine fused...
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I think that the real reason that we saw a decline in CABG, AV replacement, and other CT surgery had to do with primary disease prevention, i.e. the reduction in rheumatic fever secondary to antibiotic use, the reduction in smoking and subsequently, atherosclerosis. This, combined with an increase/success in minimally invasive procedures (PTCA, PTCA with stents). Spine surgery and total joints have not seen these types of changes.
Even minimally invasive surgery/procedures have not taken off in THA/TKA or spine surgery like they did in CT/GenSurg. We still do the same procedures that we were doing 20 years ago, only instead of a 12 inch incision, we use an 8 or a 6 inch incision. Instead of a discectomy and fusion, we are doing a microdiscectomy, etc. (Besides, there is no role for arthroscopy in total joint replacement and endoscopy in spine has really not caught on, except in some anterior approaches, and then it is not changing the indication for surgery, just the method by which we do it.)
Also, I think you may be a bit confused about arthritis and the spine. There is a tremendous amount of arthritis in the spine and many common conditions are caused by zygapophyseal arthritis and degenerative intervertebral disc disease. I encourage you to read about disc herniation, spinal stenosis, degenerative spondylolisthesis, cervical and lumbar radiculopathy, and central cord syndrome.
Spine surgeons are not going to go out of business anytime soon--unless there is a medical treatment for aging, degeneration and cessation of arthritic changes.
Id feel pretty confident about my future going into Adult Reconstruction or Spine as a graduating orthopod.
Hope this helps,
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americas joints will not be able to withstand the vertical pressure onslaught of americas fat asses. the future is bright...until the machines take over.
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Yeah. but who wants to operate on a centenarian?
(For you non-Latin speakers, that's a GOMER that is 100 years old)
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I just shot coffee out my nose when I read this.
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Just a side note, I believe that operating on centenarians will be commonplace by the time we (current med students and even residents) are well into our careers.
Granted this will not be sports medicine in its truest form, (doing an arthroscopy on monday and watching the same patient return a kickoff for 80 yards 2 weeks later) but we will still have to do these procedures to maintain quality of life.
Also what our future patients father might call "my knee acting up"; our well educated future patient will call "severe osteoarthritis" and know that a total knee replacement will help this.
Well those are just my two cents from my ortho-tech & geriatrics experience. Take or leave what you want.
I would be more worried about government based medical insurance (say NO to Hillary in '08) than how little work orthopedics may have in the future
Granted this will not be sports medicine in its truest form, (doing an arthroscopy on monday and watching the same patient return a kickoff for 80 yards 2 weeks later) but we will still have to do these procedures to maintain quality of life.
Also what our future patients father might call "my knee acting up"; our well educated future patient will call "severe osteoarthritis" and know that a total knee replacement will help this.
Well those are just my two cents from my ortho-tech & geriatrics experience. Take or leave what you want.
I would be more worried about government based medical insurance (say NO to Hillary in '08) than how little work orthopedics may have in the future
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I would not be over-confident that the future is glowing for specialties like joints just because of the baby boomer factor.
In med school, the CV surgeon I worked with who was clearing 1.5mil in the 80s was making ~700 just a few years ago. While many of his would-be patients probably ended up in the cath lab, his case load has not declined. Reimbursements simply went down and other costs have gone up.
I would not enter a field based on the reimbursements of today. It is true that certain joint procedures offer the best bang for the buck in all of medicine. At the same time, consider what the govt will be paying (i.e. the carrier who will be paying) 10 or 20 years from now for a total knee.
My gut feeling is that in the coming years spine will go the way of the cardiovascular surgeon. If you're chasing money, like probably some current CV surgeons have done, you may find yourself in long and tedious cases 15 years from now earning a fraction of what you started off making.
Rote to say, it all falls back on the notion that you should do what you enjoy doing, regardless of the pay...
In med school, the CV surgeon I worked with who was clearing 1.5mil in the 80s was making ~700 just a few years ago. While many of his would-be patients probably ended up in the cath lab, his case load has not declined. Reimbursements simply went down and other costs have gone up.
I would not enter a field based on the reimbursements of today. It is true that certain joint procedures offer the best bang for the buck in all of medicine. At the same time, consider what the govt will be paying (i.e. the carrier who will be paying) 10 or 20 years from now for a total knee.
My gut feeling is that in the coming years spine will go the way of the cardiovascular surgeon. If you're chasing money, like probably some current CV surgeons have done, you may find yourself in long and tedious cases 15 years from now earning a fraction of what you started off making.
Rote to say, it all falls back on the notion that you should do what you enjoy doing, regardless of the pay...